What? You don't like independent artists and small business entrepreneurs?
The other side of your coin is that when one proposes a new product to a large company, the large company (using your principles) just takes it and runs it into a profitable line without giving one any profit or credit. Been there, done that. The only protection that an independent inventor has, and it's not much, comes in the Provisional Patent Application. This merely gives the small inventor, who wants to start his own business, standing to sue in court when the big boys try to appropriate his or her work. And then it only lasts for a year, during which time the small guy has to develop his product, market, partnerships and investments, and shell out the big bucks for the full patent application.
Do you say that because you can't produce anything intellectual, and only consume the work of others?
The Courts give us separate and unequal justice, depending upon who can afford a lawyer. They dismiss out of hand the vast majority of cases brought by those who try to argue their cases on their own, without a lawyer. Usually hanging the dismissal on any single error that gives a Court plausible deniability, like the old literacy and pencil tests that kept Black people from voting. It's not like the people they dismiss know enough to dispute the Courts' decisions.
People talk about banning guns and magazines as if "it could save just one life". It never seems to occur to them that one of the significant factors driving the high rate of violence in this country may well be the certitude that if we can't afford a lawyer, the Courts deny us any other path to justice.
If we can't pay for justice, we can't get any.
Not surprisingly, this falls hardest upon those with less income, opportunity and education, who make up the majority of the prison population - people of color. But not just them. It hits anyone who lives on the margins, like people with disabilities, mental illnesses and homelessness. The people that Judges care so much less about, perhaps because they think such people are parasites who don't contribute to society. And who generally aren't allowed to have proud and productive work, perhaps because those who can afford lawyers think such people don't have anything to contribute.
Thus, access to justice in this country suffers from segregation as fundamental as that addressed by the Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education case. Separate and unequal.
NPR and most liberal news outlets have the habit of reporting only the call for "if we could just do something that would save just one life", to justify more gun control. But I don't see it reporting on the places that already have those laws. The Guardian does better: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
It shows that Puerto Rico, which has gun laws that limit firearms to one per house, with just one box of ammunition, along with massive registration, has a homicide rate of 18.3/100,000. Mexico, another country with tough gun laws has a rate of 9.97/100,000. The United States has rate of 2.97/100,000, despite being first in the world for gun ownership. Both Puerto Rico and Mexico are torn with drug cartel violence, and Puerto Ricans are moving in drove to the U.S. to escape it. Moving to the place that has more guns than almost anyone. Where they feel safer, as even NPR reported. NPR just didn't mention the gun laws.
As for background checks, most states have draconian mental health laws that make it a commitable offense merely to be accused of being threatening while mentally ill. The accusations often become proven fact as due process goes out the window. Just look at the psychiatric hospitals who committed tens of thousands without any mental illness or record of violence, in the State of Texas alone (Source: Houston Chronicle "Profitable Addictions" series, 40+ articles), after the Supreme Court 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision. One could parody the elevation of psychiatry to near-infallible status in that decision with: "Although your heart surgeon has never seen you or your medical record, and has heard about you only through hypothetical questions, don't worry about a thing - there is no convincing evidence that he is almost entirely unreliable."
No doubt, as far as the gun control wingnuts are concerned, the more people on lists who can't own guns, the better. No matter if they got there through medical fraud, or the kind of "treatment" that people of color used to get under Jim Crow. Ah, NPR, show us your true colors. We hardly knew ye.
Who has the most guns and the highest murder rate? http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
Who commits the most violence? http://verdict.justia.com/2011/08/10/armed-and-crazy
Where are people fleeing from gun violence, and where are they going? http://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171071473/-don-t-give-up-on-us-puerto-ricans-wrestle-with-high-crime
I called Mom at my Brother's this afternoon to see about going over to visit her tomorrow afternoon. She has been staying there recovering after heart problems. She said that my Brother and Sister-in-law asked her to leave and find a place of here own. She's been staying in their bedroom on the first floor to avoid the stairs.
She's moving to assisted living here in Tulsa, and she doesn't sound happy about it. She had been living in her own home in Arkansas for 50 years and doesn't want to leave it. I told her that I would support her whatever she decided, then found out that it wasn't all her decision. If I had what they had, I'd put in an elevator, or at least a chair lift, and let her stay.
Trying to cheer her up a little, I pointed out how many years she could pay the rent with the money she has in banks. And she said, "Oh, I hope I don't live that long." I know the feeling. It came for me when I was a small child and found out how little the other parent wanted me.
But my Brother likes to prove he's in charge and rolls right over people no matter what. He's given me a month to get my things out of her house so they can sell it. The gas for one trip would cost me just about all the extra I could afford in one month. I do hope he gets over his testosterone poisoning, but it appears to be terminal. Not that I would do anything - I can resist temptation.
But for him to make Mom feel that low - what a mensch. All heart. What kind of god wants people to treat each other this way?
Abraham Lincoln had his moments. Like when he said that God wasn't on either side of the Civil War. So what is it about Christians, especially conservative Christians, that makes them so proud of hurting people. Whether it's whipping and terrorizing small children, or segregating the ill and disabled from proud and productive work, or making a senior strain hernias, arthritis and a back damaged by a drinking driver on heavy labor, they seem to get such a righteous charge out of it. As if it validates some idea that God loves them best. And of course you can't tell them anything about it. If you do, then you're just not taking personal responsibility. You're just trying to hurt them.
Take my brother. Please. He hasn't changed much over the years. When we were little kids in grade school, he found that he could say nasty things that hurt my feelings. He played that like his favorite toy. Then one day I'd had enough. I turned it right back on him and played the snotty jerk to his face. You should have seen the look on it. That wasn't fair! I wasn't supposed to make him hurt.
One day I was tired and zoned out. He backed up, sat down on his bed, and broke one of his favorite model planes that he had built. Of course it wasn't his fault; it was all mine. "Why didn't you tell me it was there!"
In high school we had two beds in a room, each with a reading lamp on the headboard. One night I was trying to get to sleep. Not always easy because of the nightmares, anxiety and depression. But he just couldn't be satisfied with his reading lamp. He had to have the overhead light on. He wouldn't turn it off when I asked him, and when I did, he would march right over to the switch and turn it back on. Several times, until I waited there in the dark, and socked him in the eye. He wasn't the one being mean; it was all me.
These days, when people are doing things he finds offensive, like living on the dole when there's no work, or asking for social justice, his favorite jeer - "Well, it's all about me!" Indicating not so subtly his disgust with people who are so self-centered that they don't consider and adopt his moral righteousness.
The Favorite Son can tell his brother to hazard the rent with extra expenses, and strain old, painful injuries moving things out of his mother's house - or lose them. The things that one accumulates and invests feeling in to make up for the lack of a love in a family. But that's not his problem. His only Christian responsibility is to tell others what they ought to be doing. No, it's not his responsibility; it's all mine.
Nope. Not much change at all. It seems to be a complete mystery to him why other people might find that incredibly annoying and hard to forget. Well he's right about one thing; it's always been all about him. And a lack of personal maturity and responsibility.
I wonder, when I have to keep my Father's temper so tight in its cage, if I'll ever be able to go back to church and have any feeling of grace and forgiveness. A long, long shot that is.
Dad always wanted to make an impression on us. He said so often enough and freely demonstrated the technique. It got a lot worse in Albuquerque, where he got even with the insects with double doses of Chlordane on the garden vegetables. He was too manly to take precautions.
Protracted neurotoxicity from chlordane sprayed to kill termites. K H Kilburn and J C Thornton http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522193/
I could watch him cross a room, and he would yell, "What are you looking at me like that for! I'll give you something to look at!" Of course, I couldn't really see his belt whenever it was swinging in from behind. I was watching because I was afraid of him.
In one particularly memorable and spectacular red-faced, spitting rage, he screamed at the top of his voice, "I know you're intelligent, Don! I know you are! I just don't see how you're ever going to make it in life!" No kid between 12 and 16 ever forgets something like that.
The Favorite Son, the one Dad liked, has his ways of making an impression. His favorite jeer sounds like a particular sterile cross-breed of equine, which comes out in high-low pitch, "Now! Do-o-o-n!" He hated it in high school when his classmates applied the same sequence to him in the manner that Johnny Carson used to gently apply to a certain profane comedian named Lenny. But now it's his turn.
In the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, there's a Licensed Professional Counselor that likes to point out to people in doubt that if they have problems with a lot of other people, "Then who's the common denominator? It's you." She likes to make her impression on people who can't forget.
Now my Mom is old and less healthy, and wants her family to all get together and make nice for her. We should all just forget the past and get along. My inability to forget about it is a major stumbling block that makes her feel so bad. But it's kind of hard to get past things when everyone else is perfect and never has to have an adult conversation about it. For them, jeers have always worked so much better.
This, from the family who left me in the local loony bin, where the LPCs love, or at least feel duty-bound, to punish people for not seeing it their way. That if we are in any way tempted to suicide to escape all those lasting impressions and current failures, then it's just our personal responsibility to get over it. And of course, we should be feeling guilty for not shaping up.
I can see how conservative Christians would object to gays married with kids, because Christians do it so much better. Hold in all the work problems until they get home, and let loose on the kids. Make threats if a kid gets a wrong look on his or her face. Whip and terrorize them if they don't get the message.
Gays are so limited; they just couldn't manage that much parental involvement.
For the better part of a year, I've been getting dunning letters from people I never heard of addressed to Susan B--. They allege that this person has a bill for something like T-Mobile for about $1500. Lately I've been getting calls from people looking for Susan B. I always figured they were scams, intended to snooker the easily confused into responding to bills for services one never ordered.
Now I wonder. It could be a kind of sideways identity theft. Just pick a name and address out of the phone book and pretend to be related and living at the same address. But if T-Mobile actually sold services to this phony person, you'd think that T-Mobile would have taken more care to make sure that this person actually exists.
I wouldn't know how that works - I've been using a pre-paid by the minute service for years for an emergency phone. I wouldn't touch a contract service. They cost way too much. I won't even sign up for cable TV. I'd even like to disable the Internet connection on my phone.
I took one of the letters to the Post Office today, and the mailman suggested contacting the Police. The Tulsa Police? They work for the likes of me, do they? They don't even bother to interview neighbors before dragging a person off to local loony bin, or even to get sworn statements from the people claiming to be threatened.
When someone ran into my truck in the Apartments parking lot, and I got parts of his taillight lens and photos of where they fell out of his truck, They couldn't be bothered to do anything because They didn't see it happen, and They don't bother with collisions on "private property".
If I took this to the TPD, They'd probably arrest me for allegedly stealing my own identity. Less work for Them, I'm sure.
How the state and county circumvent and violate state mental health law
I'm still working on a petition to the Supreme Court of the United States. As I was looking up laws and regulations, this once again came to light. On the day I was picked up and interviewed, I filled out, signed and dated a "DMHSAS Designation of Treatment Advocate". The form says:
"Each person served by a licensed mental health provider or organization has the right to name a Treatment Advocate. This can be someone with whom you would like to partner during your course of treatment. A Treatment Advocate should be someone you trust and whose advice you value, such as a family member, spouse or partner, or a friend or representative from an advocacy organization. You have the right to set limits regarding the level of involvement of the person you select and you have the right to change your selection at any time. You also have the right not to name a Treatment Advocate. If you choose to name a Treatement Advocate, this person must agree to serve and adhere with all policies and rules addressing confidentiality."
This is governed by Oklahoma State Code Title 43A, sections 1-109.1 (including, "The individual designated as a treatment advocate shall act at all times in the best interests of the consumer"), 3-424.B ("the right to communicate with legal counsel, a treatment advocate, or the Department may not be denied."), and 4-107a.B ("the right to communicate ... may not be denied").
Further, the regulations of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services state: 450:15-3-18. Right to consultant opinions (a) Every consumer has the right to request the opinion of an outside medical or psychiatric consultant at his or her own expense and the facility shall not impede access between the consultant and the consumer. (b) Every consumer shall have a right to an internal consultation upon request, at no expense. The second opinion shall become part of the consumer record. (c) The facility's medical director shall review the second opinion as well as the treatment team's opinion and shall document decision.
Governance by the Hippocratic Oath is questionable, at best.
I filled out this form, dated 8/3/10, and wrote: "Dr Beaman OU Psych Dept 619-4400". I wanted the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic involved because I had been going there for the previous seven years for medication management for depression and PTSD, demonstrating that I took my medication faithfully (after all, I had asked for something to help me deal with an internal hell) and had not committed or planned any violence. I expected the O.U. Psych Clinic to point these things out in my defense and mediate my "treatment".
Instead, on August 6, 2010, District Court Judge Theresa Dreiling filed a court paper declaring that TCBH held the medical information that "is not available elsewhere and can only be obtained from the detaining and/or treating facility". That is patently false. I had not only been consulting with the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic for the previous seven years, but also with the O.U. Adult Medicine, and then Family Medicine Clinics.
The TCBH Psychiatrist who was allegedly treating me, Dr. Lori C. Miller, who signed as a "witness", mental health evaluator, and petitioner for detention and commitment, informed me that I could not talk to Dr. Beaman, or for that matter anyone else at the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic. Her excuse - they were "not admitted to practice" at TCBH. When I got someone in supposed authority from the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic on the phone to beg them to intervene on my behalf, that person refused to become involved, claiming they couldn't. ODMHSAS regulations state that a "consumer" has a right to at least an internal second opinion. After I applied for one, a psychiatric technician, one of the grunts on the floor, informed me that it had been decided above his pay grade that I just wasn't going to get one.
Well that's understandable. If psychiatrists at TCBH (paid by the State of Oklahoma) are going to pick out who needs to be their captive patients and get them committed by the County District Court without any fuss, it just won't do to have any exculpatory information come to light. And it won't do to have another arm of the State mental health system interfering, just because someone has been a patient there for most of a decade. That would all have to be repressed regardless of any State law or regulation, or any Constitutional right to due process or equal protection. I suppose that complaining about this state of affairs, as best one can, is what U.S. Federal District Court Judge Terrance Kern refers to as "frivolous", and even "illogical".
In Barefoot v. Estelle (1983) the Supreme Court of the United States says of the duties of federal courts in death penalty cases, "They need not, and should not, however, fail to give nonfrivolous claims of constitutional error the careful attention they deserve." But in our system of justice, it seems this can't apply to cases of false involuntary commitment; in order to justify the indefinite imprisonment of a single sexual predator in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997), the Supreme Court has declared that it is not possible for such imprisonments to be "punitive", because they are "treatment".
Faced with a mental health system that would betray us even after we ask for help and spend years within it, and faced with the kind of justice that, for the sake of twisting logic in the cases of a few, rolls over us like a plague and then refuses to hear our pleas, it is no wonder that our society is more violent than others.
And did I mention that Judge Dreiling overrode my attempt to explain the situation at Glenwood Apartments, and defend myself, claiming something like, "We just aren't concerned with that now." In the State of Oklahoma, it seems, the Department of Mental Health, and the District Court of Tulsa County, it's not convenient or worthwhile to listen to anyone with a mental illness defend themselves. Never mind those pesky Constitutional Amendments. Once they have been accused by hearsay, sworn to by a mental health "professional" who was not present at the time of the alleged threats, and who did not see fit to investigate the truthiness of the accusers, it's all over but the "treatment" to ham-handed behavior modification.
If anyone thinks that Jim Crow laws, kangaroo courts and sanctimonious behavior modification will keep the tiny minority of people with mental illnesses who kill others from doing harm, especially with firearms, they will be tragically disappointed. You can't solve problems by blaming and punishing anyone and everyone who seems to fit the bill. As Justice Brandies said in Whitney v. California 274 U.S. 357 (1927), “Men feared witches and burned women.” Back when women were as powerless as those with mental illnesses are today.
My Father never lost his temper. No, that was always someone else's responsibility - it was something we just did to ourselves. Recently I reminded Mom about the time that he took me out behind the house, cut a willow switch and horsewhipped me. I was about five, give or take a year. She excused him because that's the way that his god-fearing parents treated him. And, "He just did that because you didn't come when he called." I may have hung up on her. I certainly felt like it.
That's when it started. From then on I only deserved to be whipped, shunned, threatened and cut down. Oh, he provided the necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. He just couldn't love, the thing I wanted most. Mom has never been able to understand why I tried to kill myself, back when I was 17 and 23. She just can't understand how anyone could think that way. But then, I never saw him whip her or scream in her face. That was just my problem. And she never said boo about it.
Not long ago, she was crying to me about how much it hurts her that her family (children, he's dead now) can't get along. Then she goes and does something that just sticks a knife in and twists. She told me that she can't see me Sunday afternoon because she's going over to my brother's house to celebrate Easter and his daughter-in-law's birthday. She always tells me when she can't see me because of the family affairs where I'm not invited.
I could say how that makes me feel, but you have to be careful. Say that the wrong way in the wrong place, and some jackleg psychiatrist, who is glad to tell you that you're just not "self aware" like she is, will get you committed in the local Kangaroo Kounty Kourt, and keep you until you're ready to thank her for "saving" you. As if that could possibly heal the grief. Which family is always so thoughtful to keep alive and fresh.
No, there's nothing like the love of a Christian family. It's like absolutely, positively,
A long time ago, when I was a lot younger and better looking, I used to work at the National Space Technology Laboratory (NSTL) in Mississippi. Old Senator John Stennis had porked it through Congress to provide a place for NASA to test its space shuttle and huge rocket engines. It was so large, it had its own ZIP code; NTSL MS 39529. It had other major laboratories, like the National Atmospheric and Oceanography Administration Data Buoy Office and the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Laboratory, as well as their supporting contractors. About 13,500 acres in all, and around all that, 125,000 acres of "acoustic buffer zone".
I remember someone telling me that when it was built, they moved everyone out of their homes in the buffer zone, and tore down any structure that had walls. It hit the old people the worst. The Government uprooted people who had been living in their homes most or all of their lives. Some of the old people filled with so much sorrow, they died. You might think they could have found a compromise. After all, it is was really going to be so loud that no one could live there, how could anyone have worked at the laboratories?
I had nothing to say in forcing Mom out of her home. No one listens to me, including her. Plenty of old people in the retirement apartments where I once lived had visiting care. Some has oxygen bottles, or power chairs, or had come there for hospice. Dad died at home. Other than my sibling's insistence, there was no real reason why Mom couldn't have lived well to the end of her days in her own home.
Now I wonder about the ultimate effect on her. My sister-in-law tells me that Mom isn't eating and drinking enough. And she used to brag about how many glasses of water a day she drank. Aunt Gladys died in a nursing home with terribly painful arthritis. In spite of the pain, she hung on until Uncle Charlie died, of pneumonia I think. Then she stopped drinking, and went in a few days. Dad went the same way, by prior arrangement, when Parkinson's deprived him of the ability to swallow.
Deciding what is best for someone else, particularly when they don't really agree, doesn't always produce the intended effects. Mom has spoken about how she doesn't want to live to be a hundred. She could easily decide simply to stop trying and slip away.
At best, I have trained as an engineer and scientist, not a lawyer, and am not able to decide which questions are necessary and sufficient for this case. I present the questions as concisely, precisely and comprehensively as my ability allows, but Clarence Earl Gideon’s five pages are considerably more elegant. I only know how to write academic research papers, which this petition resembles more than a legal brief.
In this bastion of freedom, there is one group, who by law and the grace of the Supreme Court of the United States, may be summarily jailed in the democratic equivalent of a communist re-education camp, not just for what we think or say, not just for what we might be thinking, not just for what someone fears we might be thinking, but on the mere false allegation that we have said or might think something that someone claims to make them afraid. For example, OSC 43A-1-103.18.c: “having placed another person or persons in a reasonable fear of violent behavior directed towards such person or persons or serious physical harm to them as manifested by serious and immediate threats”, which in practice requires no comprehensive or diligent investigation, sworn statements from accusers, cross-examination of accusers, or proof beyond second-hand hearsay, the “Third Party Statement” of someone who “swears” that an unsworn accuser said that one of us said something threatening. Besides which, every bigot is reasonable, just ask one.
And if someone should think that no one could or would ever take advantage of this to loot medical insurance, or circumvent an unprovable criminal case, or dispose of someone they don’t like, or merely prove their superiority over an unpopular minority, that lawyers will zealously defend us, or that courts will assiduously protect our civil rights, due process and equal protection under the law, then please give my warmest regards to his invisible friend, the six-foot pink rabbit.
The abused civil rights of a whole minority raise as many questions as previous civil rights issues. Many of the most far-reaching are presented first, in critique of this Court’s previous mental health decisions. This Court has long treated people with mental health issues with a broad and suspicious brush, painting us into a second-class status with a double standard of justice, where we are dangerous until proven otherwise, upon any mere allegation[1]. This, despite decades of previous medical and legal research to the contrary[2], and more current information[3] showing that only political power and correctness keeps other subgroups, who are statistically several times “more dangerous”, from being treated to the same double standard of justice.
Whether it’s killing civilians in Viet Nam, because “they don’t value human life like we do”, or justifying slavery because “they just aren’t capable of caring for themselves like us”, or because black males were considered to be natural sexual predators, or zapping an autistic child into catatonia[4], humans make excuses for all kinds of evil, claiming that “those other people just don’t think like we do”. Almost every culture and religion has some history of sanctimonious violence towards other cultures and religions that they consider(ed) to be threatening, warped, perverted and deserving of subjugation or death. So too, with those of us who have less power to object, and have already been damaged[5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] by abuse, assault, traumas, or an unfortunate role of genetic dice.
Ironically, where other groups, from black rappers to white militias[12], may speak violence with impunity, with the full protection of the Courts and the First Amendment, this Court empowers legislatures to hold people with mental illnesses to an extra-legal, special standard of restriction, and to punish any imagined “inappropriate communication”[13] with a “massive curtailment of liberty”[14] under the color of law and medicine, masquerading as “treatment”.
This Court's overly-broad mental health criteria[15] subsequently empowered psychiatric hospitals to initiate a series of insurance scams[16] [17] [18] [19] [20]. In which ordinary, innocent people, without any criminal history or even mental illness, were committed involuntarily under duress, or dragged in off the street by bounty-paid, Gestapo-like, psychiatric goon squads, on any mere suspicion or allegation, so that their mental health insurance benefits could be drained for the hospitals' profits. In the State of Texas alone, these scams and kidnappings damaged the lives of tens of thousands of people, down to babies one year old[21]. In the U.S. Military CHAMPUS health system alone, they drained hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified medical expenses.
Laden and Schwartz[22] have detailed how, after this Court embraced them, popular myths about psychiatric disabilities subsequently gave rise to a consulting industry for identifying employees with a “potential of violence in the workplace”. Its non-scientific profiling merely identified anyone with psychiatric symptoms, after which the Courts nullified accommodation of disability on the basis of “reasonable fears” of threat. Which neatly deprives such unemployed people of the economic power to afford lawyers and bring suit.
While the Houston Chronicle took over forty articles in its “Profitable Addictions” series of articles to document psychiatric scams in Texas, this Court expects it all to be explained in less than forty pages[23], and thus far refuses to see the overly-broad and horrific consequences of its errors. I will do what I can, but this goes to the bone for me; I am not qualified to write this section the way the Court may expect.
[1] The practical and current application of Oklahoma State Code, Title 43A, Part 1-103. Definitions, mandating “treatment” for anyone who is mentally ill and “having placed another person … in a reasonable fear of violent behavior”, without any further investigation, sworn testimony of those alleging to be threatened, interviews of witnesses to the contrary, or objections even to hearsay from any “public defender”.
[2] Monahan, John, circa 1980. The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior, 1995 softcover ed., Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, NJ & London, 134 p., over 200 references from 1922-1979. {John S. Shannon Distinguished Professor of Law Horace W. Goldsmith Research Professor of Law Professor of Psychology and Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia School of Law}
[3] Colb, Sherry F., Aug 10, 2011, Armed and Crazy: Should Mentally Ill People Be Permitted to Own Firearms?, Justia.com {Justia columnist, Professor of Law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar at Cornell University}
[4] 2002, autistic, 18-year-old Andre McCollins was shocked 31 times over a seven-hour period at the Judge Rotenberg Center for children with developmental difficulties (see http://www.cchrflorida.org/blog/electric-shocks-are-inhumane-and-barbaric/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJ10qnrfl4&)
[5] McFarlane etal, 2006, Prevalence of vicimization, posttraumatic stress disorder and violent behavior behavior in the seriously mentally ill, Aust N Z J Psychiatry, 2006 Nov-Dec, 40(11-12):1010
[6] Saleptsi, etal, 2004, Negative and positive childhood experiences acress developmental periods in psychiatric patients with different diagnoses – an exploratory study, BMC Psychiatry, 2004 Nov 26, 4:40
[7] Sansone, et al., 2006, Childhood trauma, borderline personality symptomatology, and psychophysiological and pain disorders in adulthood, Psychosomatics 47:2, March-April 2006
[8] Teicher, et al., 2006, Sticks, stones and hurtful words: relative effects of various forms of childhood maltreatment, Am J Psychiatry, 2006 Jun, 163(6):993-1000
[9] Teplin, et al., 2005, Crime victimization in adults with severe mental illness: Comparison with the National Crime Victimization Survey, Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2005 August, 62(8):911-921
[10] Widom, Cathy Spatz, Ph.D., 1999, Posttraumatic stress disorder in abuse and neglected children grown up, Am J Psychiatry 1999, 156:1223-1229
[11] McNally, et al., Does early psychological intervention promote recovery from posttraumatic stress?, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(2):45-79
[12] Hutaree militia in U.S.A v. Stone, et al., Fed. Dist. Ct. MIED, 2:10-cr-20123-VAR-PJK, 3/27/2012
[13] Licensed Professional Counselor Julie King, ODMHSAS Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, Aug 2010
[14] Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504 (1972)
[15] Including in: O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418 (1979), Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454 (1981) Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990), and especially Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880 (1983)
[16] Smith, Mark, staff writer, 1990s“ Profitable Addictions” series, Houston Chronicle; over 40 articles in the 1990s. Copies of these sources have been filed with the Honorable Justice Sotomayor on CD-ROM, and rejected, which the Court should consider changing its Rules to accept.
[17] Kerr, Peter, April 29, 1992, Government review finds 64% of psychiatric hospital stays aren’t needed, New York Times News Service
[18] Boodman, Sandra, May 08, 1992, Ads for Psychiatric Hosptials Come Under Attack, The Washington Post
[19] Sileo, Chi Chi, Jan 24, 1994, Rip-off depress mental health care – fraud in psychiatric hospital practices, Insight on the News
[20] Nadler, Art, Jan 24, 1998, Several claim they’ve been hospitalized against their will, Las Vegas Sun
[21] Smith, Mark, 1993. PROFITABLE ADDICTIONS/Doctor who triggered probe claims he's scapegoat; MARK SMITH Staff; SUN 07/18/1993 HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Section State, Page 1, 2 STAR Edition; “Health Department records show that in the most recent fiscal year, the early screening program paid for 3,339 people under age 21 to be treated in private psychiatric hospitals. That included 205 children from ages 1 to 5. … "I can think of almost no circumstances where a 2-year-old should be in a psychiatric hospital. That's been a problem and I think the state recognizes that," said Dr. Mike McKinney”
[22] Laden, Vicki A. & Schwartz, Gregory, 2000, Psychiatric disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the new workplace violence account, Berkeley J. of Empl & Labor Law, 21:246-270
I'm reading "Child 44" by Tom Rob Smith, about an MGB State Policeman in the Soviet Union, where and when it was treason to voice doubt of the perfection of the State. On page 39, he kicks himself for forgetting the presumption of guilt, expressed by: "Better to let ten innocent men suffer than one spy escape."
Here in Oklahoma, as in many States, we do better than that with mental illness. We commit 17 to 50 harmless people to institutions for every dangerous person let go.
I finished reading Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44" yesterday. It shows a lot of parallels between our mental health system and Soviet justice. Once the suspect was denounced as a threat to the Soviet State (dangerous to self or others), guilt (dangerousness) was presumed. The interrogation (mental health examination) was merely the means to expose that guilt (instability, delusion, grandiosity, paranoia, hallucinations, et cetera).
After which, there was no question of self defense. Once the interrogation (mental health examination) had been written on paper, its judgments became fact, which could not be questioned without bringing forbidden disrepute upon the State (of Oklahoma). After all, under Stalin it was better that 10 innocent men suffer (17 to 50 non-dangerous people be committed), than for one spy (dangerous person) to go free. The trial (commitment hearing) merely set the punishment (detention and "treatment"). In both cases, the prosecution provided all the experts that gave witness or testified, which were employees of the State (of Oklahoma). The defense attorney could only question them, if at all; no outside experts (the accused patient's doctors and psychiatrists of long-standing) were allowed.
So here we are in one of the most conservative states in the Union, with a special category of justice, modeled closely upon the Soviet system. Ain't irony grand?
No one seems to think emotional legislation through, ask what can go wrong, and how it can be prevented. So, suppose you're a woman who has been stalked, brutally raped and put into the hospital. Not only that, you don't know who attacked you and can provide no useful information to the police, because rapist used a mask, date-rape drug and/or blunt instrument to the head. You get out of the hospital, and not only is he still out there, but you are having terrible nightmares about it. You go to a psychiatrist for help, and start taking psychiatric medication to deal with the depression, anxiety and nightmares. And once you have healed physically, you start taking self-defense courses in both judo and firearms.
In the meantime, your stalker has plans for you. He starts phoning in anonymous tips that you have been making threats to any man who walks by. After all, you have been talking about buying a gun and defending yourself from attack. With a firearm, oh my. Which you can't effectively dispute, because you have largely withdrawn from society. The Police visit you asking questions. Or let's say that you tell your psychiatrist that you wish it was just all over with, without any specific plans to kill yourself.
Congratulations, under Oklahoma law you have now become a danger to yourself or others. Which the local thought police, otherwise known as the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services, are only too happy to certify. The police arrest you and drag you off to the local loony bin, the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, which is only too happy to certify that you are paranoid and delusional, can't look after yourself, and direly need their services. You decline to voluntarily commit yourself because you are the victim and have done nothing wrong. Which, unknown to you, ensures that you will be involuntarily committed.
Either way, your name will now pop up in a universal background check as "dangerously mentally ill". When you try to buy the firearm you have trained to use, you are denied and the police are alerted. And your stalker-rapist? Well, he has plans for you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it to stop him. What are you going to do, call the police? After they carted you off to be certified as dangerously delusional? Just imagine how well that's going to work.
May you never find your self in this kind of situation.
Bring the death penalty back to Mental Health Court!
According to Cornell law professor Sherry Colb, people with mental illnesses commit "violent acts" at a rate of 2 to 1 that of the general population. Blacks commit homicide at a rate of 8 to 1 compared to whites. Men commit homicide at a rate of 10 to 1 compared to women. Obviously any "violent act" by a person with a mental illness is equal to 4 to 5 homicides by anyone else. That must be why we are second-class citizens. It's a wonder that Mental Health Court doesn't have the death penalty.
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COMMENTS
Posted by: Don B
208 comments total
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Re: Intel. Property's Bitter-Enders
The other side of your coin is that when one proposes a new product to a large company, the large company (using your principles) just takes it and runs it into a profitable line without giving one any profit or credit. Been there, done that. The only protection that an independent inventor has, and it's not much, comes in the Provisional Patent Application. This merely gives the small inventor, who wants to start his own business, standing to sue in court when the big boys try to appropriate his or her work. And then it only lasts for a year, during which time the small guy has to develop his product, market, partnerships and investments, and shell out the big bucks for the full patent application.
Do you say that because you can't produce anything intellectual, and only consume the work of others?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The Courts give us separate and unequal justice, depending upon who can afford a lawyer. They dismiss out of hand the vast majority of cases brought by those who try to argue their cases on their own, without a lawyer. Usually hanging the dismissal on any single error that gives a Court plausible deniability, like the old literacy and pencil tests that kept Black people from voting. It's not like the people they dismiss know enough to dispute the Courts' decisions.
People talk about banning guns and magazines as if "it could save just one life". It never seems to occur to them that one of the significant factors driving the high rate of violence in this country may well be the certitude that if we can't afford a lawyer, the Courts deny us any other path to justice.
If we can't pay for justice, we can't get any.
Not surprisingly, this falls hardest upon those with less income, opportunity and education, who make up the majority of the prison population - people of color. But not just them. It hits anyone who lives on the margins, like people with disabilities, mental illnesses and homelessness. The people that Judges care so much less about, perhaps because they think such people are parasites who don't contribute to society. And who generally aren't allowed to have proud and productive work, perhaps because those who can afford lawyers think such people don't have anything to contribute.
Thus, access to justice in this country suffers from segregation as fundamental as that addressed by the Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education case. Separate and unequal.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
NPR and most liberal news outlets have the habit of reporting only the call for "if we could just do something that would save just one life", to justify more gun control. But I don't see it reporting on the places that already have those laws. The Guardian does better: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
It shows that Puerto Rico, which has gun laws that limit firearms to one per house, with just one box of ammunition, along with massive registration, has a homicide rate of 18.3/100,000. Mexico, another country with tough gun laws has a rate of 9.97/100,000. The United States has rate of 2.97/100,000, despite being first in the world for gun ownership. Both Puerto Rico and Mexico are torn with drug cartel violence, and Puerto Ricans are moving in drove to the U.S. to escape it. Moving to the place that has more guns than almost anyone. Where they feel safer, as even NPR reported. NPR just didn't mention the gun laws.
As for background checks, most states have draconian mental health laws that make it a commitable offense merely to be accused of being threatening while mentally ill. The accusations often become proven fact as due process goes out the window. Just look at the psychiatric hospitals who committed tens of thousands without any mental illness or record of violence, in the State of Texas alone (Source: Houston Chronicle "Profitable Addictions" series, 40+ articles), after the Supreme Court 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision. One could parody the elevation of psychiatry to near-infallible status in that decision with: "Although your heart surgeon has never seen you or your medical record, and has heard about you only through hypothetical questions, don't worry about a thing - there is no convincing evidence that he is almost entirely unreliable."
No doubt, as far as the gun control wingnuts are concerned, the more people on lists who can't own guns, the better. No matter if they got there through medical fraud, or the kind of "treatment" that people of color used to get under Jim Crow. Ah, NPR, show us your true colors. We hardly knew ye.
Re: It's Complicated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
Who commits the most violence?
http://verdict.justia.com/2011/08/10/armed-and-crazy
Where are people fleeing from gun violence, and where are they going?
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171071473/-don-t-give-up-on-us-puerto-ricans-wrestle-with-high-crime
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I called Mom at my Brother's this afternoon to see about going over to visit her tomorrow afternoon. She has been staying there recovering after heart problems. She said that my Brother and Sister-in-law asked her to leave and find a place of here own. She's been staying in their bedroom on the first floor to avoid the stairs.
She's moving to assisted living here in Tulsa, and she doesn't sound happy about it. She had been living in her own home in Arkansas for 50 years and doesn't want to leave it. I told her that I would support her whatever she decided, then found out that it wasn't all her decision. If I had what they had, I'd put in an elevator, or at least a chair lift, and let her stay.
Trying to cheer her up a little, I pointed out how many years she could pay the rent with the money she has in banks. And she said, "Oh, I hope I don't live that long." I know the feeling. It came for me when I was a small child and found out how little the other parent wanted me.
But my Brother likes to prove he's in charge and rolls right over people no matter what. He's given me a month to get my things out of her house so they can sell it. The gas for one trip would cost me just about all the extra I could afford in one month. I do hope he gets over his testosterone poisoning, but it appears to be terminal. Not that I would do anything - I can resist temptation.
But for him to make Mom feel that low - what a mensch. All heart. What kind of god wants people to treat each other this way?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Abraham Lincoln had his moments. Like when he said that God wasn't on either side of the Civil War. So what is it about Christians, especially conservative Christians, that makes them so proud of hurting people. Whether it's whipping and terrorizing small children, or segregating the ill and disabled from proud and productive work, or making a senior strain hernias, arthritis and a back damaged by a drinking driver on heavy labor, they seem to get such a righteous charge out of it. As if it validates some idea that God loves them best. And of course you can't tell them anything about it. If you do, then you're just not taking personal responsibility. You're just trying to hurt them.
Take my brother. Please. He hasn't changed much over the years. When we were little kids in grade school, he found that he could say nasty things that hurt my feelings. He played that like his favorite toy. Then one day I'd had enough. I turned it right back on him and played the snotty jerk to his face. You should have seen the look on it. That wasn't fair! I wasn't supposed to make him hurt.
One day I was tired and zoned out. He backed up, sat down on his bed, and broke one of his favorite model planes that he had built. Of course it wasn't his fault; it was all mine. "Why didn't you tell me it was there!"
In high school we had two beds in a room, each with a reading lamp on the headboard. One night I was trying to get to sleep. Not always easy because of the nightmares, anxiety and depression. But he just couldn't be satisfied with his reading lamp. He had to have the overhead light on. He wouldn't turn it off when I asked him, and when I did, he would march right over to the switch and turn it back on. Several times, until I waited there in the dark, and socked him in the eye. He wasn't the one being mean; it was all me.
These days, when people are doing things he finds offensive, like living on the dole when there's no work, or asking for social justice, his favorite jeer - "Well, it's all about me!" Indicating not so subtly his disgust with people who are so self-centered that they don't consider and adopt his moral righteousness.
The Favorite Son can tell his brother to hazard the rent with extra expenses, and strain old, painful injuries moving things out of his mother's house - or lose them. The things that one accumulates and invests feeling in to make up for the lack of a love in a family. But that's not his problem. His only Christian responsibility is to tell others what they ought to be doing. No, it's not his responsibility; it's all mine.
Nope. Not much change at all. It seems to be a complete mystery to him why other people might find that incredibly annoying and hard to forget. Well he's right about one thing; it's always been all about him. And a lack of personal maturity and responsibility.
I wonder, when I have to keep my Father's temper so tight in its cage, if I'll ever be able to go back to church and have any feeling of grace and forgiveness. A long, long shot that is.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Dad always wanted to make an impression on us. He said so often enough and freely demonstrated the technique. It got a lot worse in Albuquerque, where he got even with the insects with double doses of Chlordane on the garden vegetables. He was too manly to take precautions.
Protracted neurotoxicity from chlordane sprayed to kill termites. K H Kilburn and J C Thornton
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522193/
I could watch him cross a room, and he would yell, "What are you looking at me like that for! I'll give you something to look at!" Of course, I couldn't really see his belt whenever it was swinging in from behind. I was watching because I was afraid of him.
In one particularly memorable and spectacular red-faced, spitting rage, he screamed at the top of his voice, "I know you're intelligent, Don! I know you are! I just don't see how you're ever going to make it in life!" No kid between 12 and 16 ever forgets something like that.
The Favorite Son, the one Dad liked, has his ways of making an impression. His favorite jeer sounds like a particular sterile cross-breed of equine, which comes out in high-low pitch, "Now! Do-o-o-n!" He hated it in high school when his classmates applied the same sequence to him in the manner that Johnny Carson used to gently apply to a certain profane comedian named Lenny. But now it's his turn.
In the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, there's a Licensed Professional Counselor that likes to point out to people in doubt that if they have problems with a lot of other people, "Then who's the common denominator? It's you." She likes to make her impression on people who can't forget.
Now my Mom is old and less healthy, and wants her family to all get together and make nice for her. We should all just forget the past and get along. My inability to forget about it is a major stumbling block that makes her feel so bad. But it's kind of hard to get past things when everyone else is perfect and never has to have an adult conversation about it. For them, jeers have always worked so much better.
This, from the family who left me in the local loony bin, where the LPCs love, or at least feel duty-bound, to punish people for not seeing it their way. That if we are in any way tempted to suicide to escape all those lasting impressions and current failures, then it's just our personal responsibility to get over it. And of course, we should be feeling guilty for not shaping up.
They sure make an impression.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I can see how conservative Christians would object to gays married with kids, because Christians do it so much better. Hold in all the work problems until they get home, and let loose on the kids. Make threats if a kid gets a wrong look on his or her face. Whip and terrorize them if they don't get the message.
Gays are so limited; they just couldn't manage that much parental involvement.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
For the better part of a year, I've been getting dunning letters from people I never heard of addressed to Susan B--. They allege that this person has a bill for something like T-Mobile for about $1500. Lately I've been getting calls from people looking for Susan B. I always figured they were scams, intended to snooker the easily confused into responding to bills for services one never ordered.
Now I wonder. It could be a kind of sideways identity theft. Just pick a name and address out of the phone book and pretend to be related and living at the same address. But if T-Mobile actually sold services to this phony person, you'd think that T-Mobile would have taken more care to make sure that this person actually exists.
I wouldn't know how that works - I've been using a pre-paid by the minute service for years for an emergency phone. I wouldn't touch a contract service. They cost way too much. I won't even sign up for cable TV. I'd even like to disable the Internet connection on my phone.
I took one of the letters to the Post Office today, and the mailman suggested contacting the Police. The Tulsa Police? They work for the likes of me, do they? They don't even bother to interview neighbors before dragging a person off to local loony bin, or even to get sworn statements from the people claiming to be threatened.
When someone ran into my truck in the Apartments parking lot, and I got parts of his taillight lens and photos of where they fell out of his truck, They couldn't be bothered to do anything because They didn't see it happen, and They don't bother with collisions on "private property".
If I took this to the TPD, They'd probably arrest me for allegedly stealing my own identity. Less work for Them, I'm sure.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I'm still working on a petition to the Supreme Court of the United States. As I was looking up laws and regulations, this once again came to light. On the day I was picked up and interviewed, I filled out, signed and dated a "DMHSAS Designation of Treatment Advocate". The form says:
"Each person served by a licensed mental health provider or organization has the right to name a Treatment Advocate. This can be someone with whom you would like to partner during your course of treatment. A Treatment Advocate should be someone you trust and whose advice you value, such as a family member, spouse or partner, or a friend or representative from an advocacy organization. You have the right to set limits regarding the level of involvement of the person you select and you have the right to change your selection at any time. You also have the right not to name a Treatment Advocate. If you choose to name a Treatement Advocate, this person must agree to serve and adhere with all policies and rules addressing confidentiality."
This is governed by Oklahoma State Code Title 43A, sections 1-109.1 (including, "The individual designated as a treatment advocate shall act at all times in the best interests of the consumer"), 3-424.B ("the right to communicate with legal counsel, a treatment advocate, or the Department may not be denied."), and 4-107a.B ("the right to communicate ... may not be denied").
Further, the regulations of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services state: 450:15-3-18. Right to consultant opinions
(a) Every consumer has the right to request the opinion of an outside medical or psychiatric consultant at his or her own expense and the facility shall not impede access between the consultant and the consumer.
(b) Every consumer shall have a right to an internal consultation upon request, at no expense. The second opinion shall become part of the consumer record.
(c) The facility's medical director shall review the second opinion as well as the treatment team's opinion and shall document decision.
Governance by the Hippocratic Oath is questionable, at best.
I filled out this form, dated 8/3/10, and wrote: "Dr Beaman OU Psych Dept 619-4400". I wanted the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic involved because I had been going there for the previous seven years for medication management for depression and PTSD, demonstrating that I took my medication faithfully (after all, I had asked for something to help me deal with an internal hell) and had not committed or planned any violence. I expected the O.U. Psych Clinic to point these things out in my defense and mediate my "treatment".
Instead, on August 6, 2010, District Court Judge Theresa Dreiling filed a court paper declaring that TCBH held the medical information that "is not available elsewhere and can only be obtained from the detaining and/or treating facility". That is patently false. I had not only been consulting with the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic for the previous seven years, but also with the O.U. Adult Medicine, and then Family Medicine Clinics.
The TCBH Psychiatrist who was allegedly treating me, Dr. Lori C. Miller, who signed as a "witness", mental health evaluator, and petitioner for detention and commitment, informed me that I could not talk to Dr. Beaman, or for that matter anyone else at the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic. Her excuse - they were "not admitted to practice" at TCBH. When I got someone in supposed authority from the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic on the phone to beg them to intervene on my behalf, that person refused to become involved, claiming they couldn't. ODMHSAS regulations state that a "consumer" has a right to at least an internal second opinion. After I applied for one, a psychiatric technician, one of the grunts on the floor, informed me that it had been decided above his pay grade that I just wasn't going to get one.
Well that's understandable. If psychiatrists at TCBH (paid by the State of Oklahoma) are going to pick out who needs to be their captive patients and get them committed by the County District Court without any fuss, it just won't do to have any exculpatory information come to light. And it won't do to have another arm of the State mental health system interfering, just because someone has been a patient there for most of a decade. That would all have to be repressed regardless of any State law or regulation, or any Constitutional right to due process or equal protection. I suppose that complaining about this state of affairs, as best one can, is what U.S. Federal District Court Judge Terrance Kern refers to as "frivolous", and even "illogical".
In Barefoot v. Estelle (1983) the Supreme Court of the United States says of the duties of federal courts in death penalty cases, "They need not, and should not, however, fail to give nonfrivolous claims of constitutional error the careful attention they deserve." But in our system of justice, it seems this can't apply to cases of false involuntary commitment; in order to justify the indefinite imprisonment of a single sexual predator in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997), the Supreme Court has declared that it is not possible for such imprisonments to be "punitive", because they are "treatment".
Faced with a mental health system that would betray us even after we ask for help and spend years within it, and faced with the kind of justice that, for the sake of twisting logic in the cases of a few, rolls over us like a plague and then refuses to hear our pleas, it is no wonder that our society is more violent than others.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
And did I mention that Judge Dreiling overrode my attempt to explain the situation at Glenwood Apartments, and defend myself, claiming something like, "We just aren't concerned with that now." In the State of Oklahoma, it seems, the Department of Mental Health, and the District Court of Tulsa County, it's not convenient or worthwhile to listen to anyone with a mental illness defend themselves. Never mind those pesky Constitutional Amendments. Once they have been accused by hearsay, sworn to by a mental health "professional" who was not present at the time of the alleged threats, and who did not see fit to investigate the truthiness of the accusers, it's all over but the "treatment" to ham-handed behavior modification.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
-- from the cartoon series "Shoe" By Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
My Father never lost his temper. No, that was always someone else's responsibility - it was something we just did to ourselves. Recently I reminded Mom about the time that he took me out behind the house, cut a willow switch and horsewhipped me. I was about five, give or take a year. She excused him because that's the way that his god-fearing parents treated him. And, "He just did that because you didn't come when he called." I may have hung up on her. I certainly felt like it.
That's when it started. From then on I only deserved to be whipped, shunned, threatened and cut down. Oh, he provided the necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. He just couldn't love, the thing I wanted most. Mom has never been able to understand why I tried to kill myself, back when I was 17 and 23. She just can't understand how anyone could think that way. But then, I never saw him whip her or scream in her face. That was just my problem. And she never said boo about it.
Not long ago, she was crying to me about how much it hurts her that her family (children, he's dead now) can't get along. Then she goes and does something that just sticks a knife in and twists. She told me that she can't see me Sunday afternoon because she's going over to my brother's house to celebrate Easter and his daughter-in-law's birthday. She always tells me when she can't see me because of the family affairs where I'm not invited.
I could say how that makes me feel, but you have to be careful. Say that the wrong way in the wrong place, and some jackleg psychiatrist, who is glad to tell you that you're just not "self aware" like she is, will get you committed in the local Kangaroo Kounty Kourt, and keep you until you're ready to thank her for "saving" you. As if that could possibly heal the grief. Which family is always so thoughtful to keep alive and fresh.
No, there's nothing like the love of a Christian family. It's like absolutely, positively,
nothing.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
A long time ago, when I was a lot younger and better looking, I used to work at the National Space Technology Laboratory (NSTL) in Mississippi. Old Senator John Stennis had porked it through Congress to provide a place for NASA to test its space shuttle and huge rocket engines. It was so large, it had its own ZIP code; NTSL MS 39529. It had other major laboratories, like the National Atmospheric and Oceanography Administration Data Buoy Office and the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Laboratory, as well as their supporting contractors. About 13,500 acres in all, and around all that, 125,000 acres of "acoustic buffer zone".
I remember someone telling me that when it was built, they moved everyone out of their homes in the buffer zone, and tore down any structure that had walls. It hit the old people the worst. The Government uprooted people who had been living in their homes most or all of their lives. Some of the old people filled with so much sorrow, they died. You might think they could have found a compromise. After all, it is was really going to be so loud that no one could live there, how could anyone have worked at the laboratories?
I had nothing to say in forcing Mom out of her home. No one listens to me, including her. Plenty of old people in the retirement apartments where I once lived had visiting care. Some has oxygen bottles, or power chairs, or had come there for hospice. Dad died at home. Other than my sibling's insistence, there was no real reason why Mom couldn't have lived well to the end of her days in her own home.
Now I wonder about the ultimate effect on her. My sister-in-law tells me that Mom isn't eating and drinking enough. And she used to brag about how many glasses of water a day she drank. Aunt Gladys died in a nursing home with terribly painful arthritis. In spite of the pain, she hung on until Uncle Charlie died, of pneumonia I think. Then she stopped drinking, and went in a few days. Dad went the same way, by prior arrangement, when Parkinson's deprived him of the ability to swallow.
Deciding what is best for someone else, particularly when they don't really agree, doesn't always produce the intended effects. Mom has spoken about how she doesn't want to live to be a hundred. She could easily decide simply to stop trying and slip away.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At best, I have trained as an engineer and scientist, not a lawyer, and am not able to decide which questions are necessary and sufficient for this case. I present the questions as concisely, precisely and comprehensively as my ability allows, but Clarence Earl Gideon’s five pages are considerably more elegant. I only know how to write academic research papers, which this petition resembles more than a legal brief.
In this bastion of freedom, there is one group, who by law and the grace of the Supreme Court of the United States, may be summarily jailed in the democratic equivalent of a communist re-education camp, not just for what we think or say, not just for what we might be thinking, not just for what someone fears we might be thinking, but on the mere false allegation that we have said or might think something that someone claims to make them afraid. For example, OSC 43A-1-103.18.c: “having placed another person or persons in a reasonable fear of violent behavior directed towards such person or persons or serious physical harm to them as manifested by serious and immediate threats”, which in practice requires no comprehensive or diligent investigation, sworn statements from accusers, cross-examination of accusers, or proof beyond second-hand hearsay, the “Third Party Statement” of someone who “swears” that an unsworn accuser said that one of us said something threatening. Besides which, every bigot is reasonable, just ask one.
And if someone should think that no one could or would ever take advantage of this to loot medical insurance, or circumvent an unprovable criminal case, or dispose of someone they don’t like, or merely prove their superiority over an unpopular minority, that lawyers will zealously defend us, or that courts will assiduously protect our civil rights, due process and equal protection under the law, then please give my warmest regards to his invisible friend, the six-foot pink rabbit.
The abused civil rights of a whole minority raise as many questions as previous civil rights issues. Many of the most far-reaching are presented first, in critique of this Court’s previous mental health decisions. This Court has long treated people with mental health issues with a broad and suspicious brush, painting us into a second-class status with a double standard of justice, where we are dangerous until proven otherwise, upon any mere allegation[1]. This, despite decades of previous medical and legal research to the contrary[2], and more current information[3] showing that only political power and correctness keeps other subgroups, who are statistically several times “more dangerous”, from being treated to the same double standard of justice.
Whether it’s killing civilians in Viet Nam, because “they don’t value human life like we do”, or justifying slavery because “they just aren’t capable of caring for themselves like us”, or because black males were considered to be natural sexual predators, or zapping an autistic child into catatonia[4], humans make excuses for all kinds of evil, claiming that “those other people just don’t think like we do”. Almost every culture and religion has some history of sanctimonious violence towards other cultures and religions that they consider(ed) to be threatening, warped, perverted and deserving of subjugation or death. So too, with those of us who have less power to object, and have already been damaged[5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] by abuse, assault, traumas, or an unfortunate role of genetic dice.
Ironically, where other groups, from black rappers to white militias[12], may speak violence with impunity, with the full protection of the Courts and the First Amendment, this Court empowers legislatures to hold people with mental illnesses to an extra-legal, special standard of restriction, and to punish any imagined “inappropriate communication”[13] with a “massive curtailment of liberty”[14] under the color of law and medicine, masquerading as “treatment”.
This Court's overly-broad mental health criteria[15] subsequently empowered psychiatric hospitals to initiate a series of insurance scams[16] [17] [18] [19] [20]. In which ordinary, innocent people, without any criminal history or even mental illness, were committed involuntarily under duress, or dragged in off the street by bounty-paid, Gestapo-like, psychiatric goon squads, on any mere suspicion or allegation, so that their mental health insurance benefits could be drained for the hospitals' profits. In the State of Texas alone, these scams and kidnappings damaged the lives of tens of thousands of people, down to babies one year old[21]. In the U.S. Military CHAMPUS health system alone, they drained hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified medical expenses.
Laden and Schwartz[22] have detailed how, after this Court embraced them, popular myths about psychiatric disabilities subsequently gave rise to a consulting industry for identifying employees with a “potential of violence in the workplace”. Its non-scientific profiling merely identified anyone with psychiatric symptoms, after which the Courts nullified accommodation of disability on the basis of “reasonable fears” of threat. Which neatly deprives such unemployed people of the economic power to afford lawyers and bring suit.
While the Houston Chronicle took over forty articles in its “Profitable Addictions” series of articles to document psychiatric scams in Texas, this Court expects it all to be explained in less than forty pages[23], and thus far refuses to see the overly-broad and horrific consequences of its errors. I will do what I can, but this goes to the bone for me; I am not qualified to write this section the way the Court may expect.
[1] The practical and current application of Oklahoma State Code, Title 43A, Part 1-103. Definitions, mandating “treatment” for anyone who is mentally ill and “having placed another person … in a reasonable fear of violent behavior”, without any further investigation, sworn testimony of those alleging to be threatened, interviews of witnesses to the contrary, or objections even to hearsay from any “public defender”.
[2] Monahan, John, circa 1980. The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior, 1995 softcover ed., Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, NJ & London, 134 p., over 200 references from 1922-1979. {John S. Shannon Distinguished Professor of Law Horace W. Goldsmith Research Professor of Law Professor of Psychology and Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia School of Law}
[3] Colb, Sherry F., Aug 10, 2011, Armed and Crazy: Should Mentally Ill People Be Permitted to Own Firearms?, Justia.com {Justia columnist, Professor of Law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar at Cornell University}
[4] 2002, autistic, 18-year-old Andre McCollins was shocked 31 times over a seven-hour period at the Judge Rotenberg Center for children with developmental difficulties (see http://www.cchrflorida.org/blog/electric-shocks-are-inhumane-and-barbaric/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJ10qnrfl4&)
[5] McFarlane etal, 2006, Prevalence of vicimization, posttraumatic stress disorder and violent behavior behavior in the seriously mentally ill, Aust N Z J Psychiatry, 2006 Nov-Dec, 40(11-12):1010
[6] Saleptsi, etal, 2004, Negative and positive childhood experiences acress developmental periods in psychiatric patients with different diagnoses – an exploratory study, BMC Psychiatry, 2004 Nov 26, 4:40
[7] Sansone, et al., 2006, Childhood trauma, borderline personality symptomatology, and psychophysiological and pain disorders in adulthood, Psychosomatics 47:2, March-April 2006
[8] Teicher, et al., 2006, Sticks, stones and hurtful words: relative effects of various forms of childhood maltreatment, Am J Psychiatry, 2006 Jun, 163(6):993-1000
[9] Teplin, et al., 2005, Crime victimization in adults with severe mental illness: Comparison with the National Crime Victimization Survey, Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2005 August, 62(8):911-921
[10] Widom, Cathy Spatz, Ph.D., 1999, Posttraumatic stress disorder in abuse and neglected children grown up, Am J Psychiatry 1999, 156:1223-1229
[11] McNally, et al., Does early psychological intervention promote recovery from posttraumatic stress?, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(2):45-79
[12] Hutaree militia in U.S.A v. Stone, et al., Fed. Dist. Ct. MIED, 2:10-cr-20123-VAR-PJK, 3/27/2012
[13] Licensed Professional Counselor Julie King, ODMHSAS Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, Aug 2010
[14] Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504 (1972)
[15] Including in: O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418 (1979), Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454 (1981) Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990), and especially Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880 (1983)
[16] Smith, Mark, staff writer, 1990s“ Profitable Addictions” series, Houston Chronicle; over 40 articles in the 1990s. Copies of these sources have been filed with the Honorable Justice Sotomayor on CD-ROM, and rejected, which the Court should consider changing its Rules to accept.
[17] Kerr, Peter, April 29, 1992, Government review finds 64% of psychiatric hospital stays aren’t needed, New York Times News Service
[18] Boodman, Sandra, May 08, 1992, Ads for Psychiatric Hosptials Come Under Attack, The Washington Post
[19] Sileo, Chi Chi, Jan 24, 1994, Rip-off depress mental health care – fraud in psychiatric hospital practices, Insight on the News
[20] Nadler, Art, Jan 24, 1998, Several claim they’ve been hospitalized against their will, Las Vegas Sun
[21] Smith, Mark, 1993. PROFITABLE ADDICTIONS/Doctor who triggered probe claims he's scapegoat; MARK SMITH Staff; SUN 07/18/1993 HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Section State, Page 1, 2 STAR Edition; “Health Department records show that in the most recent fiscal year, the early screening program paid for 3,339 people under age 21 to be treated in private psychiatric hospitals. That included 205 children from ages 1 to 5. … "I can think of almost no circumstances where a 2-year-old should be in a psychiatric hospital. That's been a problem and I think the state recognizes that," said Dr. Mike McKinney”
[22] Laden, Vicki A. & Schwartz, Gregory, 2000, Psychiatric disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the new workplace violence account, Berkeley J. of Empl & Labor Law, 21:246-270
[23] One hears just 35 pages for one Justice.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I'm reading "Child 44" by Tom Rob Smith, about an MGB State Policeman in the Soviet Union, where and when it was treason to voice doubt of the perfection of the State. On page 39, he kicks himself for forgetting the presumption of guilt, expressed by:
"Better to let ten innocent men suffer than one spy escape."
Here in Oklahoma, as in many States, we do better than that with mental illness. We commit 17 to 50 harmless people to institutions for every dangerous person let go.
Ain't irony grand?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I finished reading Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44" yesterday. It shows a lot of parallels between our mental health system and Soviet justice. Once the suspect was denounced as a threat to the Soviet State (dangerous to self or others), guilt (dangerousness) was presumed. The interrogation (mental health examination) was merely the means to expose that guilt (instability, delusion, grandiosity, paranoia, hallucinations, et cetera).
After which, there was no question of self defense. Once the interrogation (mental health examination) had been written on paper, its judgments became fact, which could not be questioned without bringing forbidden disrepute upon the State (of Oklahoma). After all, under Stalin it was better that 10 innocent men suffer (17 to 50 non-dangerous people be committed), than for one spy (dangerous person) to go free. The trial (commitment hearing) merely set the punishment (detention and "treatment"). In both cases, the prosecution provided all the experts that gave witness or testified, which were employees of the State (of Oklahoma). The defense attorney could only question them, if at all; no outside experts (the accused patient's doctors and psychiatrists of long-standing) were allowed.
So here we are in one of the most conservative states in the Union, with a special category of justice, modeled closely upon the Soviet system. Ain't irony grand?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
No one seems to think emotional legislation through, ask what can go wrong, and how it can be prevented. So, suppose you're a woman who has been stalked, brutally raped and put into the hospital. Not only that, you don't know who attacked you and can provide no useful information to the police, because rapist used a mask, date-rape drug and/or blunt instrument to the head. You get out of the hospital, and not only is he still out there, but you are having terrible nightmares about it. You go to a psychiatrist for help, and start taking psychiatric medication to deal with the depression, anxiety and nightmares. And once you have healed physically, you start taking self-defense courses in both judo and firearms.
In the meantime, your stalker has plans for you. He starts phoning in anonymous tips that you have been making threats to any man who walks by. After all, you have been talking about buying a gun and defending yourself from attack. With a firearm, oh my. Which you can't effectively dispute, because you have largely withdrawn from society. The Police visit you asking questions. Or let's say that you tell your psychiatrist that you wish it was just all over with, without any specific plans to kill yourself.
Congratulations, under Oklahoma law you have now become a danger to yourself or others. Which the local thought police, otherwise known as the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services, are only too happy to certify. The police arrest you and drag you off to the local loony bin, the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, which is only too happy to certify that you are paranoid and delusional, can't look after yourself, and direly need their services. You decline to voluntarily commit yourself because you are the victim and have done nothing wrong. Which, unknown to you, ensures that you will be involuntarily committed.
Either way, your name will now pop up in a universal background check as "dangerously mentally ill". When you try to buy the firearm you have trained to use, you are denied and the police are alerted. And your stalker-rapist? Well, he has plans for you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it to stop him. What are you going to do, call the police? After they carted you off to be certified as dangerously delusional? Just imagine how well that's going to work.
May you never find your self in this kind of situation.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
According to Cornell law professor Sherry Colb, people with mental illnesses commit "violent acts" at a rate of 2 to 1 that of the general population. Blacks commit homicide at a rate of 8 to 1 compared to whites. Men commit homicide at a rate of 10 to 1 compared to women. Obviously any "violent act" by a person with a mental illness is equal to 4 to 5 homicides by anyone else. That must be why we are second-class citizens. It's a wonder that Mental Health Court doesn't have the death penalty.